Thread by @Delafina777

Please hire my incredibly compassionate, skilled friend.

https://twitter.com/littlediegitoV/status/1437496824835674115

Like, Paizo just pawned off community management on him for years, which he did gracefully and skillfully. Management complained that his management style was too kind to the workers, despite not giving him a title, raise, or management authority, which ought to tell you how much

His coworkers looked to him as a leader. He wrote and developed incredible content.

Like, let me tell you how I got to know Diego. He had started working in CS, and we'd pass each other in the hallway fairly often as I was going to meetings. And he'd always ask me how my day was going.

And, like, the creative team didn't have a ton of formal interaction w CS.

So I'd usually just smile politely and say it was going pretty well, and how was his day? And that was that. We weren't in meetings together or anything.

One day I was having a bad day. When he asked me how it was going, I was honest and said it wasn't going great.

I headed into what was certain to be a meeting that was both pointlessly contentious and incredibly stupid, and spent however long in it.

When I got back to my desk, there was a cookie (IIRC, it was a sunflower cookie) and a note.

It was from Diego, and it said something like "I'm sorry you're having a bad day and it makes me happy to see you and I hope your day gets better."

And because of years of game industry experience, I was wavering between being really touched and being worried that a male coworker was going to ask me out.

So I mentioned it to a few other people in the department and found out he'd done similar things for them.

Like, it was just simple, uncomplicated *kindness.* And he became a dear friend.

He was there for me when Paizo fired me. He was there when Lucy ate a poisonous plant and I had to wait in the emergency room to find out if she was going to make it.

I've watched him extend that kindness to other friends, and I've watched him extend it to customers who frankly, in my opinion, didn't deserve it. Like, he was so incredibly *deft* in handling people who were just being assholes.

I've seen how much his teammates at work adore him. And I've watched Paizo pile responsibility after responsibility on him (usually without any acknowledgment/promotion/raise) and how deftly he handled all of that.

And I've read his game writing and design work, and like, it's so *fresh.* And I see that same compassion in his creative work.

Like, what he brings is so, so sorely needed in game design.

Anyway, I've been furious for years at how Paizo treats him, & I want people to understand what a treasure they just threw away. They didn't deserve him in the first place, & like so many good people that company's chewed up and spit out, he tried so hard to save it from itself.

Also, like, he is from New Mexico and LOVES New Mexico and brings so much of that history and culture and perspective into his creative work and we need more of that too instead of the umpteenth iteration of Ye Olde Medieval Tavern.